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Isaac

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Well, what is it then? We've been at this for 2000 years, we've either found out what this common thread is or we must surely, on pain of pure dogmati...
August 11, 2020 at 06:58
So... "thanks, but no thanks"? I think there's a lot of confusion in this thread about what Moore's paradox is a paradox of. Here's Wittgenstein And M...
August 11, 2020 at 06:39
When you go to catch a ball do you 'do the maths' or do you just put your hand where you 'feel' the ball is going to end up? I'd say people listen to ...
August 11, 2020 at 06:04
These seem like the same issue. One thing that frustrates me about philosophy is that it seems, to my untrained impression, to be sometimes trying to ...
August 10, 2020 at 06:39
So, to clarify you seem to be saying that there's a mental activity of evaluating behaviours, and that the group we call 'moral behaviours' is a natur...
August 10, 2020 at 06:08
Maybe, but only in terms of what I intend each to do in the world, not in terms of the objects of reference in each case, the means by which I select ...
August 09, 2020 at 07:07
Inferences are formed from our perceptions (formed from our senses). Utterances are not the direct result of our senses (except in very rare cases). S...
August 08, 2020 at 21:35
Well, on pain of being unable ourselves to say what our own utterances are about, it had better be something we have access to during the construction...
August 08, 2020 at 17:37
Indeed. I could get a dog to bark 'sausages' everytime he's asked 'what's for dinner' but that wouldn't make the dog's utterances any more about my di...
August 08, 2020 at 15:51
That's just a restatement of your position, not an answer to my critique. If 'you' is a sort of personhood waiting in limbo for a body to become avail...
August 08, 2020 at 13:33
Yes. That's it. Just like the word 'bully' (which used to mean something more like 'lover'). It would have been wrong to use it to mean 'someone who b...
August 08, 2020 at 13:29
I don't necessarily think that argument is inconsistent, it just doesn't say anything compelling. You're contriving thus entity 'you' as something tha...
August 08, 2020 at 13:13
This doesn't even make sense. If you can't define 'you' by a consistent collection of matter, nor by a consistent collection of ideas, then how can yo...
August 08, 2020 at 09:28
It's no mere predilection, the pay's better. The sum total of which thus far seems to consist only of the scorn of internet philosophers. If there's s...
August 08, 2020 at 07:18
It's not a question, I'm rebutting your suggestion that it's ludicrous for a non-human to own anything (particularly in relation to the fact that comp...
August 07, 2020 at 16:33
OK. And who's assuming that? Why not? Ownership of, and responsibilty for, a thing are two different legal states. In a trust, the benefactor owns it,...
August 07, 2020 at 12:59
Well. Most people have given up on my paragraphs in the time it takes them to read the words (if not before), so I'm charmed by your persistence... In...
August 07, 2020 at 12:47
That's fine. I shouldn't have got back involved. There are some issues it's interesting to play around with, see what people think, there's others whe...
August 07, 2020 at 08:23
You didn't ask me where it happened, you asked me where it was possible. That's my point, not yours. That a legal fiction (an association) can own som...
August 07, 2020 at 08:16
Any country. Firstly, they don't just get to freely decide what to do with the car. They can't, for example, just keep it for personal use, that's emb...
August 07, 2020 at 08:02
How? Let's say a law exists that says the legal owner of my car is my cat. Another law exists which says that the legal responsibility for anything th...
August 07, 2020 at 07:42
You're confusing ownership with responsibilty.
August 07, 2020 at 07:35
What else could 'infer' possibly mean other than 'form a belief that...'? So why are we 'inferring' from listening to speech acts, but not 'inferring'...
August 07, 2020 at 06:23
No, we do different things with some of our desires than we do with language. Calling those desires 'moral's is a linguistic event. It's you talking t...
August 07, 2020 at 06:17
Ah, OK. Then yes, I'm saying there isn't a difference. In short, morality is a social concept, the language used to describe it is social too and so p...
August 06, 2020 at 18:52
Yes. Yet fifty-eight years later the effects are here somewhat blunt.
August 06, 2020 at 17:02
I think we agree 'bad' doesn't mean anything on its own beyond a vague indication toward a negative. One can be a bad actor, but a good person. One ca...
August 06, 2020 at 15:54
Because you said In order for the student to merely 'disagree' here, rather than be wrong about the meaning of the term 'morally bad' he must have his...
August 06, 2020 at 13:09
I'd forgotten about the conservative reification of ownership. No, ownership is itself just a legal status with purely legal implications (none of thi...
August 06, 2020 at 13:04
Why not? Indeed. But one of us is actually right.
August 06, 2020 at 10:54
Indeed. Distinction is one thing. Labeling one half 'belief' and the other 'truth' is an act of definition. We do not get to just define terms to our ...
August 06, 2020 at 10:53
No he's not. He's arguing that a CEOs job is soley to make as much money for the company's shareholders, customers and workers as they can within the ...
August 06, 2020 at 10:34
I can go along with your distinction between 'truths' and 'beliefs' as being the degree of justification, but it's a little too far to say that someon...
August 06, 2020 at 10:01
It depends what you mean by positivism. I've written quite extensively about model-dependent realism, which (if you take positivism to be naively real...
August 06, 2020 at 08:51
Seems in contrast with... Perhaps your straw man versions of what you think I think are not quite so robust as you'd like to believe? Perhaps this is....
August 06, 2020 at 08:39
Well then who are the experts who determine the status of certain behaviours? In Britain, if there's a dispute over the taxonomic status of a plant, a...
August 06, 2020 at 08:31
So what? You either have the power to influence them in this way (in which case you are the one in power, not them) or you don't, in which case you're...
August 06, 2020 at 06:46
You're dodging @"Janus"'s question. The point was made that enlightenment principles are simply presented as a 'better' way of dealing with the shared...
August 06, 2020 at 06:14
You set up your method as an alternative to moral 'right's being determined by whomever has the most power. I'm saying that a direct consequence of th...
August 06, 2020 at 05:54
You haven't answered the question though. I wanted to know why you confidently allowed the student to have his own private meaning for the term 'moral...
August 06, 2020 at 05:37
So if, in the first example, the student says"I understand that you think it's 'hitting' to push my fist toward an old lady this way, but I disagree,"...
August 05, 2020 at 20:31
The class 'good behaviour' has certain membership criteria. That's the same thing as the definition of 'good behaviour'. It's perfect definition is 'e...
August 05, 2020 at 19:02
I'm not following you so far as mistakes being impossible. If "it's raining" means the same as "I believe it's raining", a 'mistake' is only possible ...
August 05, 2020 at 15:39
Maybe, but that's because you have the referrents relating to words in English and also beliefs about water in your mind, you could refer to either. Y...
August 05, 2020 at 14:38
You seem to have just restated your conclusions, I was more wondering how you got there. No bother if they're just basic bedrocks for you, but if not,...
August 05, 2020 at 14:32
It seems to. If you "need to believe something about the weather to talk about the weather", then it certainly seems to follow that you must be talkin...
August 05, 2020 at 14:24
It might. But you couldn't talk about it and make any sense. To say "it's raining" requires a referrent for 'raining' to be a property of. To make a c...
August 05, 2020 at 12:49
Which would update your beliefs about the weather, you could still be mistaken. I didn't say we couldn't. I said no sense could be made of it. Right. ...
August 05, 2020 at 11:19
We're talking about the absurdity, incoherence or nonsensical nature of the sentence "It's raining but I don't believe it's raining". So the question ...
August 05, 2020 at 11:06
I'm saying that for it to 'be raining' is someone's belief that it is raining. That's what it means for it to be raining, there is no more to it raini...
August 05, 2020 at 10:45